Just a quick apology to anyone who might be reading this story of mine. Posting might be a bit slower for me than it has up to now due to a change in my personal schedule (not to mention my Muse has been AWOL for a while). But I intend to keep plugging away at it as much as I can.

I understand the writing & sceduling bit. Never seem to find the time. Have been spending most of what's available in a collaborative writing project with my wife. She's been posting the cleaned-up edits on her Henneth Anun account. So haven't put much effort into my various writing tales.

I appreciate you stopping by again, Arassuil! And thanks! Yes, I will deffinately continue to post chapters up here to my North Kingdom yarn as long as it takes to complete it, which, as it stands now, is nowhere in sight at the moment. Probably will be quite a while. But I want to take more time with each chapter from now on, as I am not al together happy with a few of the earlier ones. Actually, I would normally consider a lot of what I have posted thus far to be rough drafts and little more. But that's alright. This is a warm up tale for a historical fiction piece I am trying to write on the side

A collaborative writing project with your wife, eh? Wow, that sounds really interesting! I will be enormously curious as to how that works out for you guys. Drop me a line sometime and let me know.

Thank you very much, Raven! I am deeply humbled by your compliment I've put a lot of work into this story over the last year so I hope it is paying off a bit. Three or four more chapters to go until I finish with Part One. Then the scene switches over to Cardolan for a while (I think). Should be about 3 or 4 Parts to this in total (I think). I should have another post ready before the New Year (I think) Hope you stay tuned!

Thanks Arassuil. I'm half way through the next part of this chapter now. I'll be sort of glad to get the dungeon scene completed soon, as it's beginning to get a little gruesome. It gets less heavy after this chapter, though. It's been difficult writing it lately with the plot thickening and so forth. Hope you'll find it agreeable enough as you read on

Glad you're still here, Arassuil, and thanks! It's been slow going lately but I'm still pushing ahead as much as I can with this. I'm aiming to make new posts every 60 days or so. That way I can take the time to improve each draft before posting.

Just letting you know I'm reading & even taking a bit of inspiration from your tale. Still spending any writing time I have in the collaborative writing project I have going with my wife on Henneth Annun.

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?But because I knew youI have been changed for good.

It's funny how some distanceMakes everything seem smallAnd the fears that once controlled meCan't get to me at allIt's time to see what I can doTo test the limits and break throughNo right, no wrong, no rules for meI'm free

Arassuil - I think it's great that you and your wife are collaborating on such a writing project! I should very much like to take a peak at that. Can you provide a link to it on here? Or is that against the rules of this site? If so I guess I can always try to find it on my own. Haven't been on that site for a good while. But I am pleased that my tale here should be good enough to provide you (or anyone) with a little inspiration for creative writing. Cheers to you and your better half!

eari - Thanks for the encouragement as always! Yeah, I decided not to rush my posts anymore. If it takes 2 or 3 months to finish one then so be it. A few of the earlier posts I made thus far are beckoning to be re-written, as I consider some of them to be sub-par. But I won't give in to the temptation. Forwards, not backwards I say! I'm eager to get to Part Two where the scene changes over to Cardolan for a while. 3 or 4 more posts to go, I think. Thanks again!

Re-reading it again from the beginning?? I hope you have some spare time on your hands, Arassuil! I have often thought of doing the same but haven't because I know that if I do I will be tempted to revise and edit year-old posts once again No need to digress that way. But let me know if you come across any glaring errors or inconsistancies in the canon. I can think of at least a couple off hand but won't mention them now, as I would rather someone else take note of them.

Why thank you, R_Evert! Fancy you stopping by here Yeah, I plan on continuing with this story, though I sometimes wonder where it is all headed at this point, as it has veered off in directions that I never intended it to. But then again I always said that this tale is a 'practice piece' for me where I can work on dialogue, character interaction and development, etc, for my other non-Tolkien project that I have told you about many times before elsewhere, as you know. At any rate, I feel that at least half of this story's content is pretty good, while in parts it isn't quite up to what it ought to be, to say the least. There are a few posts I would like to do again, but have no intention of doing so at this point. A lot of this stuff is 1st drafts that I was in a hurry to post. But it's a lot of fun anyway. I hope to make another post here in about a month. As always, I welcome all feedback - positive or otherwise

Hey Celebrimbor... I haven't posted in a while, it's been a little hectic, but I have been able to catch up on your story over the past few weeks/days (I've had to create a word document it was getting a little much for my eyes)

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?But because I knew youI have been changed for good.

It's funny how some distanceMakes everything seem smallAnd the fears that once controlled meCan't get to me at allIt's time to see what I can doTo test the limits and break throughNo right, no wrong, no rules for meI'm free

Hullo eari! Good to hear from you again! Glad to know that there are a couple of folks still attempting to follow my yarn here. So the optics were straining your vision, eh? So does the Word Doc help with that?

Life always seems hectic nowadays. I understand that! I've been getting anxious to make another post to my story lately but I have been putting in more writing time into my 18th century historical fiction piece that I am attempting to write for possible publication consideration eventually. I actually was introduced to the president of a small independent publishing company recently and she encouraged me to keep writing on it and submit it to her when I get a good chunk of it done. So that really provided me with extra motivation to devote more time to that project...But I haven't forgotten poor Vilthavia and Elendis! I hope to post again with another installment in May sometime. Gotta get this storyline back on track, though. After reviewing the last few posts it seems to be drifting a bit. Feel free to dish out any pointers or advice you think of along the way, incidentally Thanks again!

Just wanted to pop in here for a moment to let those few of you who might still be following this wandering ramble of mine that the further course of this narrative might undergo some experimentation in future posts. I might even change course with the entire form of the story by transforming it into a sort of time-sweep tale, much in the manner of a James Mitchner or Edward Rutherfurd novel. It just seems to me that it will take me forever to reach the end of all I intended to do with this in the beginning. Also, in case anyone noticed, I want to use varying POV from now on. One set of characters will be treated with the standard 3rd person past-tense POV, while another set will use 3rd person present-tense (ie. this last post between Elendis and Vilthavia). My previous post with the tortured Hunthor was my attempt at a stream of consciousness narrative. Dont know how well I pulled it off, though - I'm certainly to threat to a William Faulkner or a James Joyce, of course I might even throw in an occasional 1st person POV, or possibly a few epistolary posts as well. We shall see. Though I enjoy working on this project it is, after all, a practice piece for me; something I want to use in order to improve my writing technique for my non-Tolkien fiction that I hope to publish one day. Thanks. FYI.

Thanks again for your support, Arassuil! Only a few weeks ago I was on the verge of abandoning this tale due to time constraints and my other ongoing writing project. But I've decided to forge ahead with this one as well, even though it will progress rather slowly for a while.

Celebrimbor, whatever the pace... I'm still following; the latest chapter sort of got me choked. I need to go back a few posts but I think even word is no longer enough. I'd need to have this printed (probably why I don't take my e-reader that often. I still prefer hard copy... paper waster me )

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?But because I knew youI have been changed for good.

It's funny how some distanceMakes everything seem smallAnd the fears that once controlled meCan't get to me at allIt's time to see what I can doTo test the limits and break throughNo right, no wrong, no rules for meI'm free

Thanks a ton, eari I appreciate the compliment! I guess I'm also a paper waster, as I don't even own a Kindle or e reader, etc. Although that may change in the future with all things leaning paperless these days. Printing these out is preferable for me but after a while the expense in ink cartridges is ridiculous!

While I'm here I'll just mention that Part One is nearly finished now. Only took me about three years or so, eh? Hopefully Part Two will move at a faster pace. I never meant to get so bogged down with the young Vilthavia and his part in the tale, since the remainder of the story takes place when he is a little older (ie. fast forward 5 or 6 yrs later). It all seems to have become a sort of melodrama centered entirely around him and not so much the North Kingdom, as the title suggests. I'll try and rectify that somewhat...At any rate Chapter 22 will be in three parts so as to tie up a few loose ends from a few minor characters (ie, Urlavia, Hunthor and Vidui/Odhil) that I was, quite frankly, just going to ignore for the sake of expediency but have since changed my mind in order to give them some temporary closure. Then the last chapter or two will center on my protagonist, poor ol' Vilthavia.

I was wondering ... because my cousin told me this summer that I can actually download pdf on my Kindle (discoveries every day) if you have a pdf version of the story that I would only need to download lazy me...otherwise I'll go back to the original Doc I have but it'll require reformatting

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?But because I knew youI have been changed for good.

It's funny how some distanceMakes everything seem smallAnd the fears that once controlled meCan't get to me at allIt's time to see what I can doTo test the limits and break throughNo right, no wrong, no rules for meI'm free

Hello there, eari! Well, let me think. I never thought of that before. I suppose there ought to be a way to do that. Interesting! Let me look into that over the next few days and I will certainly let you know. I've never been the most Computer savvy person in the world but I imagine I can figure it out. At any rate, I would like to know myself.

I meant to begin posting this a couple of weeks ago but extensive revisions of part two of Chapter 22 caused me to delay it. What was meant to be a typical 3,000 word post continued to morph into something much grander as more ideas occurred to me while writing it. After finishing it at last it has grown to a 10,000 + word post, and thus I shall publish it in 3 installments, I think. It deals primarily with the Hunthor character and his flight from the Misty Mountains. I never really meant to make Hunthor such a vital part of the canon, and even toyed with the idea of resorting to Dues ex Machina in order to hasten things along. But he has already played too important a role so far to do that to him, the poor fella. I am, as I previously mentioned, attempting to bring some temporary closure to some of the minor characters before concluding Part One of the story.

eari81 - I haven't forgotten about your request and even attempted to fiddle around with creating a PDF file for this story but ran into difficulties. I'm sure it can be done but I'm not the most techy man in the world when it comes to these things. Any advice you have on that (or anyone else, for that matter) would be appreciated.

Celebrimbor, your work is excellent! It captured me after starting to read a little bit and I am going to continue.... PLease don't stop!I will try to give some feedback as well if you like it - but unfortunately I am a very slow reader because I am very busy at the moment...

Thank you very much, Adaminth! You're very kind. I'm pleased that you like it so far. I certainly intend to keep working on it regardless of how long it takes to complete, so take your time, by all means! However, if you are attempting to read it from the beginning I should warn you that Ch. One is missing, it having been deleted somehow after they did some work to the site a couple years ago. I didn't even notice it myself until about a year ago when I tried to go back and check up on some of the back story. Too late now, I guess...And yes, I always welcome constructive feedback! The most obvious flaw with the story IMO is the inflated length of the entire Misty Mountain story, which comprises all of Part One. In hindsight I would've cut it in half to make it more concise. In order to remain somewhat faithful to the title of the thread my goal is to deal with (at least in part) all three of the sister-realms before it is all said and done, with emphasis on the ruin of Rhudaur, since it is the 1st of the three to fall to Angmar.